


One Good Reason

by slightlytookish



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Canon Era, Episode: s01e06 Bastogne, First Kiss, Fluff, Loneliness, M/M, Missing Scene, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-27 01:39:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17757356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlytookish/pseuds/slightlytookish
Summary: Dick refused to leave, so Nix decided to stay.





	One Good Reason

Dick lost track of Nix sometime after Lt. Rice drove off in his jeep with a promise to try and come back with more ammo. There was the line to set up, and the CP, and the men to check up on, making sure they were getting themselves dug in and settled as best as they could with the few supplies they had. As the hours passed the sky grew lighter but the fog grew thicker, and it wasn't until very late in the afternoon that a familiar slouching figure appeared out of the mist.

"Don't know why I thought I'd find you anyplace other than battalion CP," Nix said as he ducked through the makeshift door. "You've got a nice setup here, Dick. All that's missing is your typewriter."

"Nix." He was shivering so much that his teeth chattered but Dick couldn't help smiling up at him. "Want some coffee?"

He held out the cup to him, and for a moment it looked like Nix was going to say yes but he must have noticed the way Dick's hand was trembling from the cold because he waved him away. "Nah, I've got a jeep waiting. Sink's requesting my presence at HQ."

Dick nodded and tried not to let the disappointment show on his face. He'd selfishly hoped that Nix would be staying a while, maybe even for the rest of the day, but of course that didn't make any sense. Nix's place was at regiment now and Dick was glad of it, grateful that his best friend would be safely off the line with hot food in his belly and a warm place to sleep that night. 

He gave Nix the latest status report, ran through the long list of things the battalion needed, everything from food to winter clothing to more men to plug the gaps in the line. Right now it was more gaps than line, and between the lack of manpower and the creeping fog it was impossible at times to tell where their line ended and the German one began. Dick figured it was only a matter of time before someone wandered too far off course and ended up on the wrong side of the forest.

Nix listened attentively and when Dick was finished, he crouched down beside him, close enough that their knees knocked together. If someone asked Dick to describe Nix's expression in that moment, he would have called it urgent. "Come back with me."

"What?"

"Come to Bastogne with me."

"Does Sink need me there, too?" No, Nix would have said that from the start, or Col. Sink would've sent a runner. They'd only been in the Bois Jacques for about fifteen hours, but Dick wondered if the cold was muddling his mind already. It felt like it was, or maybe it was the eerie silence of the forest. He knew he should be grateful for the calm, when the opposite would only be disastrous, but there had been a couple of times that afternoon when it had felt like he was the only one out there, at least until he'd heard a machine gun in the distance.

Dick gulped some more of the coffee, hoping it'd wake him up, but it had only been tepid at best before and had gone cold in the space of his and Nix's conversation. Now the sky had grown too dark to light the fire and reheat it; lukewarm coffee wasn't worth the shelling that would surely follow.

Nix's lips twitched into a small smile. "That's probably the only way you'd agree to it, huh?" 

"You know I can't leave the men, Lew."

"Can't or won't?" Nix sighed. "Don't answer that. You'll be back in a few hours. They won't even have enough time to miss you." 

When Dick didn’t budge Nix leaned closer and lowered his voice, even though no one else was around. "Look, Dick. We're in this one for the long haul. They won't be pulling us off the line anytime soon, and there won't be any supply drops as long as this fog holds. It's no use sitting here the whole time until you turn into a block of ice. You don't see Strayer sitting out here, do you?"

Strayer had gone into town at 1200 with a vague promise to return, and Dick hadn't seen him since. 

"I'm not saying you should set up your CP in Bastogne," Nix went on, "but just come back to town with me for a while. Get something hot to eat, sleep for a couple hours. It'll do you some good."

It was tempting, so tempting, to imagine sitting someplace that had four walls and a roof for a few hours, where the snow wouldn't leach the heat from his toes and the cold wouldn't seep in through the seams of his ODs. Someplace where Nix would be too, and Dick wouldn't feel so alone. But then he thought about the men huddling two or three to a foxhole, too many of them without coats and gloves, none of them with enough food, and knew he'd only leave this forest if it were with all of them, unless Sink or Strayer hauled him to Bastogne personally. He shook his head.

Nix sighed again and got to his feet. "Think about it, at least, will you? I really do have to head over to regiment now."

"All right," Dick said, even though he knew that no matter how long he thought about it, he'd never go into town for a hot meal and leave the men to their K-rations and the bitter cold. "Take care, Lew."

"Yeah, you too," Nix muttered, and vanished into the fog. Dick stared in the direction he'd gone until he could no longer hear the crunch of the ice beneath Nix's boots, and then finished off the rest of his cold coffee.

* * *

The 101st hadn't even spent one full day in the Ardennes and if Mourmelon already seemed like a distant memory to Dick, then his weekend in Paris was little more than a dream that had faded upon waking. With every hour that passed he could feel the cold settling deeper into his bones, and no matter how many times he forced himself to get up and walk around to try and warm up, it never felt like it made a difference.

He remained in the CP for as long as he could, wanting to stay where the men could easily find him. But when it was approaching midnight and a couple of hours had gone by without him seeing another soul, Dick finally got to his feet. He knew he should try to rest, if only because the silence that seemed to blanket the entire forest wouldn't last forever, and he'd need a clear head for everything that came next.

He felt slow and clumsy as he trudged from the CP to his foxhole, and couldn't summon enough energy to do more than unroll his sleeping bag and crawl inside. He didn't feel any warmer once he did, and the walls of the foxhole did nothing to keep out the freezing wind that was rushing through the trees. His helmet felt like a block of ice pressing against his ear and the back of his head and Dick didn't know how he was going to sleep if he kept shivering like this, hard enough that his whole body was shaking from head to toe. Wherever Nix had ended up for the night, Dick prayed it was warmer than this hole in the ground.

He had half a mind to get up again and go back to his CP but he must have dozed off somehow, because he jolted awake at the sound of a twig snapping nearby. Someone was stomping through the snow, coming closer and closer with every step, and Dick reached for his M1 before cautiously peering over the edge of the foxhole only to see Nix coming towards him, carrying what looked like an enormous sack.

Dick's heart leapt in a way that he decided he wouldn't examine too closely until they were well off the line, or possibly not until after the war was over. He shouldered the gun and pushed himself out of the hole, shedding the sleeping bag as he went. It was impossible to keep the smile off his face, or out of his voice. "What's this, an early Christmas? Can't say you make much of a Santa Claus, Nix."

"Ha. Don't tell the reindeer." Nix dropped the sack at Dick's feet, looking pleased with himself. "I inspected your foxhole earlier and found it lacking, so I figured if you wouldn't visit regiment, I'd bring regiment to you. Well, as much of regiment as I could carry."

He opened up the sack, which wasn't a sack at all, but a tarp large enough to drape over the top of the foxhole. Inside the tarp Nix had stowed another, smaller tarp to line the bottom of the foxhole, along with a sleeping bag, a couple of blankets and some rations, and even a few mismatched candles that he'd managed to scrounge from somewhere. Dick hoped he hadn't raided a church.

Nix had dragged along his pack too, and when he saw Dick looking at it he said, "All right if I stay?"

As if Dick would ever say no. "Sure," he replied, and together they arranged the tarps. The foxhole was barely wide enough to fit their sleeping bags side by side, but Nix seemed undeterred as he burrowed into his, lying half against the wall of the foxhole for the lack of room. He tossed one of the blankets at Dick and wrapped the other around his shoulders like a cape, then patted his pockets until he found first his flask, and then a cigarette. Dick watched as it took him three tries to light it because he was shivering so much.

"First battalion's in Noville," he said, flicking the lighter shut. "Heard it's not going so well, but I'll know more in the morning." The tarp above their heads didn't cover the foxhole completely, but he still batted at it until a corner of it flipped aside, letting out the smoke.

The 10th Armored were in Noville too, and Dick didn't think they'd see Lt. Rice making any more ammo runs anytime soon, if it was going as badly as that. A sliver of moonlight had managed to pierce through the fog, bringing enough light for them to see each other by, but the sky was nowhere near clear enough for a supply drop. If it stayed like this, the 101st would be on their own, and would remain without enough supplies for who knew how long.

"Think it'll snow?" Nix said, watching Dick as he watched the sky. 

Dick had thought it'd felt like snow all day, but maybe that had just been because he was so cold. It was hard to tell with all the fog anyway, but snow seemed likely enough. "Probably tomorrow," he replied, and Nix nodded and went back to smoking.

"Lew," Dick said, when it became apparent that Nix wasn't going to say anything else. "What are you doing?"

"Having a smoke." He smiled wryly, lit by glow of the cigarette.

"What are you doing _here_?" Dick amended. "You could be back in town. You _should_ be back in town."

Nix snorted. "And miss all the fun?" 

"Nix."

"Dick." He nudged Dick's foot with his own. "You know, it's warmer if you get under the blankets instead of just looking at them."

Dick sighed and finally got into his sleeping bag again, lying half against the wall and half against Nix, because there wasn't room for him to go anywhere else. "You don't have to do this."

"Do what? My job? I need to know what's going on out here."

"So collect your reports and go," Dick said. "You don't need to stay here and freeze all night."

Nix took a long drag on his cigarette. "You mean like you are?"

"For Pete's sake," Dick muttered. Nix just eyed him steadily, and Dick wondered if they'd have this same argument every day for however long they were going to be here, each one trying to convince the other to go into Bastogne and neither one listening. "What if they need you back at HQ?"

Nix shrugged. "They know where to find me."

That was true enough; Dick had been hearing variations of it since they were in OCS together, and by now everyone from Col. Sink on down knew to look for one of them if they needed to find the other. But now that Nix had been promoted to regiment, it didn't seem likely that Sink would tolerate it if his S3 spent all his time hanging around second battalion's XO, and Dick didn't like the thought of it either. What had gotten him through the long, cold hours of the day, too much of it spent sitting alone in the CP with nothing but the sound of the trees creaking all around him for company, was knowing that Nix was safe back in town. He couldn't let this go on, even if this was the warmest he'd felt since they'd left Mourmelon, with the tarp keeping out most of the icy wind and Nix tucked close against his side. "There's no reason for you to stay here."

For a long moment Nix just looked at him. "I've got a reason."

Dick could only stare back. He must have misunderstood, because Nix couldn't mean what Dick thought. It was what he wanted to hear, not what Nix would say. But there was an intensity to Nix's gaze that Dick hadn't ever seen before, and when it didn't waver Dick thought that maybe he'd understood Nix perfectly after all, and that secret hope he'd held onto for so long didn't seem so impossible anymore. "Lew."

Nix finally looked away, shoulders hunched as he stubbed out his cigarette. "Just leave it, Dick," he said, suddenly sounding exhausted. He sounded like he wanted to be anywhere but there, and Dick could see exactly how this would go: Nix would leave, and they'd never talk about this again, and the moment would slip away as easily as Nix would, if Dick let it.

"No," Dick said, heart pounding. "I won't leave it." He tipped Nix's chin up so their eyes would meet, the stubble scratchy against his fingertips, and then darted in for a kiss. 

It was only a brief press of lips, but it was all that Dick dared to do out here, when someone might come looking for them at any moment. When he pulled back Nix looked stunned, and he grabbed Dick's retreating hand and held onto it as if it were the only thing keeping him tethered to this foxhole. 

"I'm glad you came back," Dick said, and Nix stared at him for another moment before his face broke into a grin.

"You know, I kind of figured that out for myself," he said, and when Nix lifted Dick's hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to his palm, it felt like a promise.


End file.
